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I have a 64bit 12.04 server with a raid 6 array.

I have setup NFS and SAMBA shares.

If I copy any files over NFS from client to server - the speed of the copy is ridiculously low - around 1-2MB/s If I copy to the same folder being shared over SAMBA - I get 45-50MB/s

However, if I copy a group of folders that exceed 10GB over either connection the server will just drop of the network and I cannot access it via ssh or any other means.

I am unable to use:

sudo ifconfig eth0 up/down

to reset the nic interface - the only option is to power down and restart the server.

If anyone can point me to any logs to check for what is causing the error or help to diagnose I would be much appreciated as this makes my server pretty much useless.

Cheers

ice.

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Instead manually restarting the interface, try

sudo restart network-manager

As for your troubles. The slow connection speed with NFS comes from the fact that NFS by default syncs everything (i.e. accepts a small chunk of data; writes the chunk down; then acknowledges accepting the chunk); this is impractical for transferring large files. One can use the async option for that, but it can be dangerous. You can read more about optimizing NFS performance here.

I'm not sure about the other problem, though. I don't know why your connection drops.

However, and in general, for large files I'd use rsync rather than mounted shares. It is more verbose and it is easier to resume from the point where it was interrupted, and all it needs is an ssh connection.

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  • Thanks - I will try the suggestions and come back. I am amazed that NFS is that much slower than Samba and it is a bit of a concern that the server effectively goes titsup when copying large files.
    – icedfusion
    Aug 30, 2012 at 14:40
  • I managed to successfully complete an rsync on well over 100GB of data. I have also updated the kernel to 3.4 from the ubuntu repos - but I am still unable to copy from/to the server in samba/nfs if the file(s) exceed 10GB. I am tempted to go to a 32bit server as 64bit seems to have lots of strange issues that the 32bit version doesn't have.
    – icedfusion
    Sep 3, 2012 at 13:01

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